Beginning Monday, October 24, we’ll be encountering some service disruptions on bus #2 (Witset).
- October 24 – 28: We have a morning driver, but no afternoon driver. Unless anything changes, parents will have to pick up their children after school.
- October 31 until further notice: we have no drivers at all (morning or afternoon). Unless anything changes, parents will have to drive to/from school (AM and PM)
This is an evolving situation. We’ll do our best to keep parents, students and schools updated via the MyBVCS app and our website.
Until this point in the year, we have been making this route work with voluntary and fill-in drivers…five different people in total. This route has only missed one trip this year due to staffing shortages! Parents are probably not aware of how much work we’ve invested to make this route function to date. We deeply appreciate the many people who have stepped in to help us with this need: Klaas Kort (every morning), Brandon Boonstra, Yvonne Wittke, Bryan Reagh and Chris Steenhof. None of these people are able to continue regularly due to other commitments.
We did have someone who was training for a class 2 and agreed to drive this route for the year. However, they had to withdraw this offer due to a changing family circumstance. We have been searching for a replacement ever since.
We now have someone else currently training for their class 2 license. This person is willing to be our ‘permanent’ route driver for the year. It will likely be four to 6 weeks before he is licensed. Until he is licensed, we will continue to do our best to fill this route with temporary drivers. However, families on bus #2 should expect significant gaps in service over the next month or so. If the service gap looks like it will be significant, we will look at some alternative bus arrangements (perhaps by using a two-week route cycle like last year). It’s too early to make that decision at this point.
If you know of a class 2 or class 1 driver who is willing to drive, please have them contact Tom Grasmeyer ASAP (tgrasmeyer@bvcs.ca) 250-847-4238. Criminal record check and good driver’s abstract are important. BVCS reserves the right to hire according to our employment policies.